I always blamed you
though I never brought anything
but charm and fortune cookies.
And a vanity for ink on my skin?
pictures you never understood or liked.
I blamed you for my inadequacies in relationships
and my penchant for addictions;
Every time I smashed a porcelain trinket
from my childhood in a rush of anger?
I blamed you.

Were you a martyr?
Winged saint like Sebastian or Bartholomew?
No daddy, you've done too much
to make a fiend,
stuck in purgatory for your sins.
But do I have the right to blame you for my faults,
Stamp your forehead with a list of my sins?
Should the cause be the effect,
the ballad be the verse?
I never should have blamed you
for all those years I couldn't look in the mirror
or all the times I searched for love in another's bed.
That wasn't your fault.
I made those choices out of stubbornness, out of fear,
fear of myself.
I  always blamed you
but I never brought understanding,
only sarcasm and scribbled notes on the backs of envelopes?
 plays for your basketball team, grocery lists.
We only got as close as I let you in
and that was never close enough.

Melissa Kolmer